Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 20, Issue 6, 2021

Abstract

The overarching aim of the article is to investigate the discourse of populist sovereignism as articulated by the leaders and/or leading candidates of four right-wing hard Eurosceptic populist parties in the following countries during the 2019 elections to the European Parliament: the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. The political parties investigated are Freedom and Direct Democracy, League, People’s Party Our Slovakia and Brexit Party. Using the analytical tools of Critical Discourse Analysis and drawing on the concept of populist sovereignism, the study investigates how right-wing Eurosceptic populist sovereignism was discursively (re)constructed by right-wing hard Eurosceptic parties during the 2019 EP elections across the four cases. As such, the inquiry brings fresh insights as it looks at right-wing populist discourse through the sovereignism perspective, thus complementing the literature on populist mobilization that focuses on grasping the linkage between populism and sovereignism.

Abstract

Human rights are essential pillars of democracies. But under populism, they are a proclaimed nemesis of political leaders who claim to represent the common people. This article argues that the discourses of strongman, patronage and fake news constitute three prominent right-wing populist ploys that erode human rights in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines. It interrogates the communicative power of populism as a means of disfiguring free expression and press freedom. Drawing from human rights and media reports and interviews, the pro-human rights current is reformatted by strongman pronouncement in the war on drugs, unity of long-established blocs of power through patronage, and belligerent charge of fake news.

Abstract

Contemporary Turkey has gone through many reforms that have been legitimized by country’s historical legacy. The constitutive elements of this legacy are images, historical figures, events, and symbolisms embedded in memory. It is through those elements that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party sets himself up as the appropriate narrator and appropriate doer, incrementally gaining an upper hand in the legitimacy struggles by telling stories from history, emerging as the new founding father of Turkey and introducing new policies rooted in the legacy of the past. How has he been able to occupy such a position of superiority through the struggles for legitimacy in Turkish politics? This paper critically argues that Erdoğan first set up his personality, imposing himself as the most appropriate narrator and finally showing himself to be the most appropriate doer, by crafting his political communication with symbols and figures from history.

Abstract

In this study we look at how pro- and anti-vaccination groups construct alternative knowledge and facts discursively and linguistically in order to challenge or support the established scientific knowledge on vaccines. Through this case study we wish to examine how the power of language interacts with a language of power when memes in creative ways mimic, produce and reproduce scientific language and practices. Drawing on a dialogical-semiotic and a discourse theoretical analytical strategy, we, first, adopt Austin’s speech act theory and Bakhtin’s concept of speech genres to argue that memes are performative with an especially illocutionary force and are made up of alien language from scientific discourses. Second, we argue that Laclau’s discursive approach to how political positions are articulated in an antagonistic terrain allows us to see vaccination memes as either subversive or supportive of a scientific social imaginary.

Abstract

This research applies Foucault’s framework of parrhesia or “truth-telling” to analyze the twelve Republican Party’s Presidential debates in 2015–2016, culminating in the nomination of Donald Trump as the party’s Presidential candidate. Using discourse and conversation analytical methods, it explores how the three main debate competitors constructed three different narratives of truth: Donald Trump’s “parrhesiastic truth;” Marco Rubio’s “orthodox truth;” and Ted Cruz’s “ironic truth” produced by combining features of the former two. Key findings of this research are that different narratives of truth compete during political elections, and that their public resonance, or lack thereof, is historically contingent, based on shifting public attitudes towards institutional power. Politicians such as Ted Cruz who attempt to emulate parrhesia risk fracturing their personal and political voices, resulting in incoherence and silence on the public stage.

Abstract

This article studies trade negotiation discourses during the US-China tariff truce, aiming at investigating the difference of ideologies of the U.S. and China journalists towards trade negotiation. Through integration of theories and methods of corpus linguistics and critical discourse studies and the use of the corpus linguistic software, the study finds that U.S. reports to some extent make itself appear as a victim of the trade, and hope to end unfair trade practices and reduce the chronic trade deficit, while China press focuses more on the harm of raising tariffs not just to each other but the global economy, through communication and dialogue rather than unilateral measures to peacefully resolve trade tensions. Perceived differences in culture have an important influence in the theoretical formation of the differences. The article concludes that the discourse patterns of the coverage imply a rising China and a new level of equilibrium in international politics.

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